


Stiff

by ariadnes_string



Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Dubious Consent, Impact Play, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things more dangerous than fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stiff

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: For the "rough body play" square on my kink_bingo card.
> 
> a/n: Major spoilers for _Insurgent_.
> 
> a/n: I'm grateful to frackin_sweet for the very helpful beta on this.
> 
> a/n: I meant to write a fic called "Four Times Four Took a Punch," just because I liked the title, but I stalled out on the first one.

His father never hit him.

Always just his implacable words, the electric air between them, and the precise burn of the belt, its marks covered easily by school clothes.

Tobias left Abnegation to be free of that. Or for what he imagined freedom to be.

Of course, Dauntless freedom was nothing like that. Where Tobias had hoped for stillness, space, and silence, there was jostling, grabbing, hitting, kissing—and laughter when he flinched. _Prude_ , the Dauntless-born taunted, _Stiff_.

He didn’t mind it, exactly. A lot of the other transfers got the same treatment, and by the time they reached the third stage of training, he could meet most any challenge they threw at him. He was good at fighting—unbeatable when he had a bit of distance and could use a gun or knife. 

No, if there was a problem it was that he enjoyed it too much. As if his body had gotten its wires crossed somehow, and couldn’t tell affection from aggression. He’d come away from initiation matches having to hide the flaring color in his cheeks, the bulge in his trousers. He’d run his wrists under cold water until he regained control.

The shame was all his own, or maybe all Abnegation. The Dauntless didn’t care. They’d been sleeping together almost as long as they’d been sparring together. Not settling down in couples, the way the Abnegation did, but aligning themselves in shifting pairs and groups, half of them formed on dares, as far as Tobias could tell--boys and boys or girls and girls together as often as boys and girls. Halfway through initiation, he’d found a Dauntless woman twice his age, both arms sleeved in tattoos, who’d relieved him of his virginity as efficiently as she would’ve cleaned a gun. It was interesting, but he still got hard in a close fight.

After the fear landscapes, after everyone started calling him Four, things changed. People started treating him like someone who would have to be reckoned with in the future. Obsequious, if such a thing were possible for the Dauntless. 

Tobias didn’t care. He was just glad they hadn’t had to face a simulated landscape of their desires.

And someone still watched him. The clearer it became that Tobias would finish first in their group, the worse it got. Tobias would look up from target practice or a sparring bout and find Eric staring at him: feet apart, arms crossed, eyes like coals. It got so Tobias wouldn’t have to turn his head: the skin would tighten between his shoulder blades, the tops of his ears would burn, and he’d know Eric was there again.

He hated it. He hated Eric. He just wished his hatred didn’t feel so much like hunger.

He was glad when initiation was over. He’d earned his place in Dauntless, earned the freedom he’d thought he only had to choose. Then one night, as he was closing the door of his tiny new apartment, someone slammed him back up against it. Tobias couldn’t see his attacker, only feel his weight against his back. But only Eric could be that hot, as if his fury were burning right through his clothes, and only Eric ever gave off that peculiarly acrid brand of sweat.

“What’s your problem?’ Tobias grunted, face against the door, arms twisted painfully behind his back. “You got what you wanted—Dauntless leader.” 

“I’m testing a theory,” Eric said. His tone was cold, but his breath seared the back of Tobias’s neck.

“Theory?” Even in from that position, he knew Eric would hear the contempt in his voice. “You wouldn’t know a theory if it hit you over the head.” That was a lie: Eric was a smart as any of them, a ruthless wolf-trap of a mind. 

Eric didn’t answer, just shoved Tobias harder into the door, a knee between his legs now, in so tight his thigh grazed Tobias’s balls. He mouthed the top of Tobias’s shoulder—not a kiss, more like a dog, searching for the best place to sink its jaws.

A surge of adrenaline went through Tobias, and with it, a traitorous bolt of lust—pricks of heat over the whole surface of his body, tightening in his scrotum, saliva in his mouth. Eric ground them closer still, hips to ass, like he sensed Tobias’s reaction. All those times Eric watched him, with what Tobias thought it was murder in his eyes—maybe it had been something else as well. Eric's erection dug into him, the answer to a question Tobias had never thought to ask.

“My theory?” Eric said, his voice thicker now. “Is that there’s more than one reason to call you “Stiff.”” 

With a chuckle at his own bad joke, he let go of Tobias’s arms with one hand, reached around, slid his fingers under the waistband of Tobias’s jeans, and grabbed his cock. Tobias jerked, shuddered with need—and could’ve cried at his body’s betrayal, at the way he lay, full and throbbing, in Eric’s hand. 

“And I think I’ve got my evidence now,” Eric sneered and stroked him fast and rough in the small space between the door and their smashed-together bodies.

For a hideous, delicious moment, Tobias let himself sink into it, the contact, the heat, the pleasure that was nearly pain. Why not? He thought, why be Dauntless if not for moments like this?

Then he realized one of his arms was free.

He drove his free elbow into Eric’s stomach and used the momentum to propel them around so that Eric’s back was against the door. Eric’s hand came off his cock with a painful twist and the shock of it cleared Tobias’s head fast.

They grappled for a moment, so close there was hardly any difference between their fighting and whatever it was they’d been doing before. Then, for some reason, Eric decided the game had changed. He pushed Tobias back, kneed him in the groin, and drilled a right hook into his jaw.

The combination knocked Tobias on his ass, left him gasping and hunched, staring up at Eric, sure there would be one last, brutal blow.

He expected to see triumph on Eric’s face, or maybe derision. What he saw was something stranger: a slackness, as if his cruel certainty had deserted him for once, leaving him bereft in its wake.

“Yeah,” Eric said, voice flat. “Just what I thought. Only one reason to call you Stiff.” 

He turned on his heel and left. Nothing like that ever happened again. But Eric’s words, his face, the whole hot, tangled incident, lingered with Tobias, pushing him off-kilter when he least expected it.

He thought his last sight of Eric—down the gleaming barrel of his own gun, all that was left of Dauntless backing the execution—would finally right the balance.

But it didn’t. It just cemented the cold, unwelcome knowledge that there were things more dangerous than fear.


End file.
